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Ana García de Fanelli

Ana García de Fanelli is Director of the Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES), and Senior researcher of the National Council of Research in Science and Technology (CONICET) at the Higher Education Department of CEDES, Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has published widely on comparative policies in higher education in Latin America, the management of public universities, and university financing. She has been a senior consultant to the International Institution of Educational Planning - UNESCO (IIPE-UNESCO), the National Commission of University Evaluation and Accreditation (CONEAU), and the Argentine Ministry of Education. Her master’s in the social sciences is from the Latin American Social Sciences School (FLACSO Buenos Aires) and her Ph.D. in economics is from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. She is a professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and at the Universidad de San Andres in Argentina.

In November, the Council of Presidents of Public Universities and the Federation of University Faculty Associations approved a collective bargaining agreement that defines a new structure for the teaching career at Argentine public universities.

In our knowledge society, research universities are key actors that can make national innovation systems more competitive. This task, however, is not easy in some Latin American countries and not only because they have a significantly lower per capita GDP than those countries with the top 100 universities. Building research universities implies concentrating funds in a handful of institutions. In a context of scarce resources and a mass education policy, this funding design may exacerbate conflict in the allocation process. So, from a political perspective it is not as feasible for Latin America to build world-class universities. Nonetheless, they should make the effort and thus close the advanced technology gap.

Executives in the Argentina's leading technology companies underscore the lack of engineers, particularly in some specialties such as electrical, electronics, civil, chemical, petroleum and mining engineering and the computer sciences. Employers say that it can take up to three months to fill a position and that a strong competition exists to attract the best graduates. Moreover, as a consequence of the lack of professionals in fields such as computing, employers hire advanced students. One negative side-effect of this practice is an increased dropout rate during the last two years of the undergraduate degree courses.

Recent events in Chile have again drawn attention to student movements. Although current political activity is less dramatic in Argentina, the debate about activism at public universities in the media and public opinion has been sparked as a result of El Estudiante (The Student), a recently released independent Argentine film.

After a period of high growth between the 1993 and 1998, the Argentine economy underwent a significant slowdown that ultimately resulted in economic depression and crisis. In 2001 and 2002 the financial sector and the exchange rate system (the so-called Convertibility Regime) collapsed and Argentina’s global socio-economic situation deteriorated. In 2003 the economic activity began to recover thanks to favorable international commodity prices. Since then, growth has been strong, averaging seven percent per year and a consequent substantial public revenue increase.